Tiger scare forces evacuation of boarding school students

Tiger scare forces evacuation of boarding school students

Saturday, December 12, 2009 22:20 WIB

Bengkulu (ANTARA News) - All 30 students of a Muslim boarding school at Tanjung Aur village in Kaur district will be evacuated to schools in other villages because tigers from the wild have begun to frequent their school`s immediate surroundings.

H Sudarmin, principal of Auliah Rahman Muslim Boarding School, said on Saturday that a Sumtran tiger (Phantera Tigris Sumatrae) was recently seen moving around the school.

"Therefore, we are to relocate our students to boarding schools at Padang Kempas village in Kaur Selatan subdistrict and at another village in Padang Guci Hulu subdistrict. We do not want to take the risk of any of our students being attacked by the beast," Sudarmin said.

He said a tiger was once seen roaming around the school and it even entered the school complex recently.

"So far, tigers have been preying only on people`s goats, dogs, and chickens but we are afraid they will eventually also attack students of our school," Sudarmin said.

Meanwhile, Tanjung Aur village head Tusiran said, since the sighting of a tiger in the settlement, the local residents had been living in constant fear of the predatory animal.

"We are still trying to think of how we can drive the tiger away from our village," Sudarmin said.

But Bengkulu`s Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA) spokesman Andi Basrah said Tanjung Aur village lay in an area that was part of a tigers` habitat and thus it would be difficult to drive them away.

http://www.antara.co.id/en/news/1260631233/tiger-scare-forces-evacuation-of-boarding-school-students

http://bigcatrescue.org/